Do Prostitution Laws Affect Rape Rates? Evidence from Europe

Abstract

We identify a causal effect of the liberalization and prohibition of commercial sex on rape rates, using staggered legislative changes in European countries. Liberalizing prostitution leads to a significant decrease in rape rates, while prohibiting it leads to a significant increase. The results are stronger when rape is less severely underreported and when it is more difficult for men to obtain sex via marriage or partnership. We also provide the first evidence for the asymmetric effect of prostitution regulation on rape rates: the magnitude of prostitution prohibition is much larger than that of prostitution liberalization. Placebo tests show that prostitution laws have no impact on nonsexual crimes. Overall, our results indicate that prostitution is a substitute for sexual violence and that the recent global trend of prohibiting commercial sex (especially the Nordic model) could have the unforeseen consequence of proliferating sexual violence. If you expel prostitutes from society, you will unsettle everything on account of lusts. (St. Augustine, in Richards 1995, p. 118)1 If you expel prostitutes from society, you will unsettle everything on account of lusts. (St. Augustine, in Richards 1995, p. 118)1